Chapter 14
Middas, the 13th of Sun's Height, Year 202 of the 4th Era
Daenerys knew what delivering the armory into Madanach's hands would mean for Markarth, but there was no way she could keep its existence hidden from him. They had fought too hard to defeat the guardians. Walking away wasn't an option. Not to mention the hard reality that they were down to half their number. The weapons and armor in this ancient cache would save Breton lives. She had already made her choice when she allied with the Forsworn to escape. She locked away her doubts and returned to tell everyone of the armory she had discovered.
After some shouts of disbelief, everyone rushed to see the armory. She was hailed as their savior, leading them to the arms and weapons that they needed to fight their way to freedom. She understood the reason why. Despite their attempt to keep their leadership meetings quiet, the convicts knew that Madanach had wanted to find a different path while she had insisted on fighting them. They also knew she'd placed her own life at risk to defeat them. To both the Bretons and the Foresworn she was the hero of the day.
The adulation of the Forsworn made her feel queasy. She could almost hear the screams of the people of Markarth. Was this different from when she burned King's Landing? Markarth would fall and Madanach would put every Nord, man, woman, and child to the sword. The deaths would be measured in thousands, compared to the hundreds of thousands who had died when she burned King's Landing, but still… While everyone ran around the armory looking for weapons and armor, she quietly prayed to Talos for guidance but received none.
"Daenerys!" called Eltrys. He walked up to her wearing a helmet, breastplate and boots made of dwemer metal and was carrying the other pieces. "Aren't you going to pick out some armor? Is there nothing in your size?"
She seized upon the size issue as an excuse. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm short and slight. I doubt any of these will fit me, but you can help me look."
"Yes. Of course, I'll help. Not like I can put the rest of this on until we can rig up some straps."
Daenerys nodded her understanding. She hadn't considered the problem, but she understood the issue. Dwarven armor was a full plate armor and like all such armor was designed to go over padding and required straps and ties to stay in place. While the dwemer metal in the armory had survived for centuries, the padding and straps had long since rotted away. She allowed Eltrys to lead the search. He had not been adapting well to life in the mines or fighting his way out. Now, he had enough enthusiasm for both of them.
Eltrys got the other Bretons involved and they found a few pieces of armor that were obviously intended for female Dwemer judging by the breasts carved into the breastplates. They were still too big for her, but not as bad as the others. Even with the proper padding she couldn't have worn the armor. Without the padding it was worse than no armor. The helmet wobbled and slipped to where she couldn't see. The breastplate kept shifting about sliding over her shoulder. Even the boots were too loose. None of it fit her. Annoyingly, Eola was large enough to wear one of the suits of armor meant for a Dwemer female. Daenerys was the only one left without armor.
Rather than sulk about it, she walked around and helped the Bretons get kitted out in their new armor. They didn't have any padding or straps, so they had to improvise. Most of the men cut strips of cloth from the legs of their trousers. A few with long beards cut them off and braided them. She helped them add their improvised bindings and secure the armor in place. The improvised straps weren't as good as properly sized leather straps, but no one complained about having armor.
The way out from the armory led up. The stairs that led up to the automaton guardians they'd defeated switched back and led up to the surface. At Madanach's suggestion they locked the gates behind them to keep out the Falmer. Daenerys understood that he was also securing the armor for his eventual return, but she didn't challenge him on it. What would be the point?
Clairvoyance led them up several stairs and to what appeared to be some kind of housing district. There was a main corridor with many rooms off to the side. Some were obviously bedrooms judging by the beds carved out of stone. Others were dining rooms with bowls, plates, and diningware all made of dwemer metal. Other rooms had no obvious purpose. They also found Falmer, which they killed with surprising ease. The dwemer metal armor made a huge difference, but it was more than that. The Falmer they had fought before had been clever. They ambushed and made coordinated attacks. These Falmer attacked foolishly in small numbers and were easily slaughtered. Daenerys wondered if they were perhaps from a different tribe from the other Falmer, or perhaps they were outcasts? Either seemed to be a plausible explanation.
After the Falmer decisively lost the first few fights, they started firing a few arrows and then retreating to the darkness and side passageways. They had a short council meeting and decided not to pursue the fleeing Falmer. Instead, they stuck to the path and pushed their way through this section of the city.
Her spell led them to another walkway through a large chamber. It was a topic of whispered debate as to whether they had returned to the main chamber where they had started, only many stories up, or if they were crossing over a different chamber. Regardless, there were no archers and they made it across the pathway without losing a man and found another lift. This lift took them up to a floor that was more roughhewn than the rest of Nchuand-Zel. Some of the walls were carved, but others were rough stone. They ran into a section with some webbing and killed a giant frostbite spider and many of its spiderlings. Past the spider they came to a section that had obviously been mined recently by men rather than dwemer. Mining carts, picks, wheelbarrows, and timbers lay scattered about the tunnels. This section of Nchaund-Zel seemed to have been abandoned for decades which still made it far younger than the dwemer city. Some of the dull grey veins glinted in the glow of her Candlelight spell, so it had most likely been a silver mine. That wasn't surprising. This was Markarth after all.
They continued up and the path came to a large set of doors. The men up front opened them cautiously and quickly closed them again. "It's still underground, but there are men outside!"
Madanach pushed his way to the front. "Let me look." He opened the door briefly and shut it again. "Understone Keep!"
That set off a wave of murmurs among the Bretons and the Forsworn.
Daenerys understood why everyone was excited. They'd found the way out, or rather a way out, but Understone Keep was an underground fortress inside the fortress city of Markarth. This was where Jarl Igmund held court, where his family and other government officials and courtiers lived. This was also where the Markarth guard was garrisoned. Escape was so close, but still so far away. There was no way they could just walk through Understone Keep dressed in either prisoner sackcloth or dwemer metal armor held together with ripped cloth strips.
Madanach turned to face her. "I told you to find the way out, priestess. We cannot leave this way. Why did your spell lead us here?" Despite the accusation of his words, there was a distinct lack of his usual hostility in his tone. He seemed honestly curious and even pleased.
It didn't take a genius to understand why Madanach was pleased. He could use this exit from Nchuand-Zel to bypass not just the city walls, but the guard on the jarl's keep. This exit to the Dwemer city would make it much easier for the Forsworn to capture Markarth. With this tunnel, they wouldn't just bypass the city wall, but could assault the jarl's keep from the inside. With a little bit of stealth and luck, the Forsworn might catch the guard napping and slaughter many of them before the Nords could even raise an alarm. Even if the Forsworn didn't have luck, they would still be fighting on even footing instead of having to force their way into Underground Keep. That the dwemer armory was not far below was just the icing on the sweetroll for the Forsworn.
"Clairvoyance is a finicky spell," explained Daenerys once again. "It will always show the shortest path to a goal, but it doesn't care about traps or other dangers. I was looking for the way to the surface. The shortest path leads through Underground Keep."
Odvan politely asked, "Why didn't it point us back through the portcullis in Cidhna mines then?"
"Because I searched for a path in front of me, not behind me. I'll try that again, but it might just lead us back to Cidhna Mine." Clairvoyance was a useful, but it was well known that small details in what you wanted could result in very different paths to your goal.
Daenerys turned her back to the door, closed her eyes, and focused on a path that led to outside. This time she thought of the mountains outside the city of Markarth and not just outside where she could see the sky. The magic worked and a smokey path formed in front of her.
"Is that it?" asked Madanach.
She shrugged. "We'll have to follow it to find out."
Clairvoyance pointed them back the way they came, past the mines, past the dead spiders, and back to the pathways in the chamber. This time they had to take the lift down a level. This led them to another pathway and into more chambers inhabited by Falmer. These Falmer were more organized, and they had to fight their way through. The dwemer metal armor made a huge difference. It also helped that there were few intersections, connecting rooms, or side passages. Without places to hide, the Falmer couldn't use their favored ambush tactics. However, they had another trick to play. The Falmer used chaurus reapers as war beasts to attack and fought alongside the insectoid creatures. The reapers spat poison that leaked around gaps in the armor and let the poison got through.
They changed formation and Daenerys dropped back to the middle of the party. She saved her magicka for healing and Candlelight instead of trying to Shout. It made sense as the Falmer and chaurus attacked quickly and in numbers unlike the dwarven automata. The dwarven armor made a difference. They cut a bloody swathe through the Falmer and left a pile of corpses behind while only taking one casualty of their own.
The path continued upward and leading along a long main corridor with few branches. They encountered fewer Falmer and more chaurus as they went. The insectoid creatures grew more aggressive attacking in swarms. The reason became obvious when they started finding piles of chaurus eggs in the corridors. They were approaching one of their nests. The fighting intensified further when some of the winged chaurus hunters joined the fight. The giant wasp-like creatures resembled chaurus reapers, but the hunters could fly. They were fast and nimble. They dipped and dived outside of sword range while spitting poison. When they spotted an opening, the hunters darted down. They slashed with razor-sharp talons, plunged stingers the size of daggers into their victim, and just as quickly flew back into the air. They lost three men in heavy fighting, and the chaurus kept coming. Eola ran out of magicka, picked up a sword, and joined the frey.
Daenerys found herself the only healer as Madanach called for them to fall back. Maybe they could have pulled off a fighting retreat against men or Falmer, but the chaurus simply didn't stop attacking. Daenerys rationed out the little bit of magicka she had left. She used just enough healing to get men back up and fight without completely healing them. She knew that partially healing a wound could leave wounds that magic couldn't heal, but she had no choice. The chaurus just wouldn't stop attacking, and this time they had no convenient doors they could slam shut. There was no place to run, no place to hide. There was only fight or die.
With the last drop of her magicka gone Daenerys waded into the fight herself wielding Molag Bal's mace. The battle had devolved into chaos: no battle lines, no tactics, and almost no light. A few men waved torches in one hand and blades in the other. The darkness favored the bugs, but they didn't give up. They fought, and they killed, and they died. Everyone else had the benefit of wearing dwemer metal armor. Daenerys didn't have that protection, but she fought anyway. Molag Bal's mace was good for squishing bugs. It smashed through chaurus chitin like flesh. A blue flash and a crash like thunder accompanied every kill she made. Daenerys had no regrets. The chaurus were just bugs. They didn't have proper souls, and if Molag Bal could also claim the souls of beasts, he was welcome to them. In the chaos of the battle she didn't even see the chaurus that spat poison at her and covered her in venom. She had recovered enough magicka to cure herself a little. She still felt weakened and nauseous, but she refused to die here in a dark tunnel fighting bugs.
She reached down inside herself and set her werewolf free. The transformation was painful, but surprisingly fast. Fire lit in her belly like strong alcohol and spread out into her limbs. The warmth turned to whipcracks of pain that surged through her body as she fell down on all fours and howled. Her body grew so fast she ripped out of her clothes as she lunged back to her feet. She had been the shortest of them all. Now she stood head and shoulders above Borgul the Beast. She charged into the chaurus and slashed out at them with her claws shredding through their chitin like it was made of paper. She heard men cheering her as she became a whirlwind of death.
She did not fight alone. Borkul the Beast started yelling at the top of his lungs. It wasn't his usual cursing and taunting. He was screaming incoherently as he fought. He abandoned his shield and fought with a hammer in one hand and a sword in the other.
The human part of her realized that Borkul had just gone berserk. The wolf had to be restrained from attacking this new challenger. Daenerys focused her aggression on the chaurus and charged. Borkul charged with her. They plunged into the thick of the chaurus swarm. She dealt death with both claws while Borkul whirled and smashed with his hammer and his sword. The wave of chaurus parted before them like an ocean wave breaking upon the rocks. Her werewolf eyes had no trouble seeing in the dimly lit corridor, and whatever she saw she killed. She made the mistake of biting the head off one chaurus. It tasted like poison. She spit it out and only used her claws after that.
They weren't the only ones fighting. Everyone rallied behind her and Borkul. They exploited the openings created and killed off the bugs they only injured. Suddenly, the tables had flipped and what had been a last stand turned into a route. She fought and killed and killed until the chaurus were no more. Then she threw back her head and howled her victory.
.oOo.
With the battle won, Daenerys let her wolf go. Her wolf had been hungry. While chaurus meat was tainted, the men around her smelled like food to her wolf, but she refused to dine on human flesh. She was naked, but she could hear men moaning in pain and the sound of a woman sobbing. Healing the wounded and getting out of here were more important than trying to find clothes. Just because they had defeated these chaurus didn't mean there weren't more out there that might attack, especially with the Falmer using them as warbeasts. She called upon her faith in Talos and cast Candlelight.
The Candlelight spell wasn't bright, but it was enough to let her see the carnage of the battle. Broken chaurus corpses littered the tunnel along with the surviving Bretons and Foresworn. The sobbing woman was Eola. She lay atop the corpse of Borkul crying.
Daenerys was surprised that Borkul was dead. Her memories of being a wolf were fuzzy. She remembered them fighting side by side, but at the end she had been fighting alone. As a wolf she hadn't really noticed that Borkul fell. She'd been too focused on the fight. Looking at his remains, she realized just how much damage Borkul had taken. His corpse was covered in puncture wounds and slashes. His belly was ripped open, one of his arms was missing below the elbow, and his left eye was a bloody mess. Any one of those wounds should have killed him, not to mention dozens of minor injuries, but he'd kept fighting. From what she knew about berserkers, especially orc berserkers, it wasn't uncommon for a berserker to keep fighting after taking several lethal blows until they finally collapsed from blood loss.
She left Eola to her grief. Others were injured and she had no comfort to offer the priestess of Namira and there were others who needed her help. They had lost a lot of men in the battle with the chaurus. Bretons had died, and the survivors all had varying degrees of injuries.
Daenerys had just finished healing a Forsworn who was suffering more from poison than anything else when Odvan approached her carrying clothes. "You should cover yourself. You may be a priestess, but you're still one of two women surrounded by men."
"Gods bless you, Odvan." He wasn't wrong. The garment was just a shirt made of prison sackcloth. It was sized for a man and way too big for her, but at least she wasn't naked any longer. She pulled it on and ignored that it didn't fit her at all. It was better than nothing. She looked up to Odvan. "I have the wolf under control, but will it cause any trouble that I'm a werewolf?"
"Are you kidding?" asked Odvan. "You're… you. Priestess, mage, Dragonborn, why not toss werewolf on top of that? Nobody gives a damn. You saved all our lives too many times. You're like one of those heroes of old. Say the word. Where you go, we follow."
"Thank you, Odvan." She certainly noticed Odvan's use of we. He was counting himself among those that would follow her. She wasn't sure how she felt about that, but now wasn't the time to debate. "There are still injured. I need to heal them, but we shouldn't stay in this tunnel. The Falmer are routed for now, but they'll return eventually, and they'll bring more chaurus. We don't want to be here then. Can you organize everyone and have our dead placed in a pile? I'll hold a short prayer and burn the corpses so neither the Forsworn or the Falmer eat them, but we should keep moving. This tunnel still leads up. Hopefully, it won't be much farther."
"Yes… Lady Targaryen." Odvan turned and departed.
She went from man to man offering them healing. There were so few of them left. They had left Cidnha mine with a bit more than fifty men. Now they were down to seventeen. They started out with more than fifty, now they numbered less than a score. The dwarven plate had undoubtedly helped, but they had still lost men. The Forsworn had taken the brunt of the losses during the last fight, only six of them remained. There were still ten Bretons surviving, eleven if she counted herself in that number. She wasn't sure why that had happened. She had healed Breton and Forsworn equally, but that battle had been chaotic even before she unleashed her wolf. After that she remembered only killing and killing until ever charus was dead. However, it happened, it was a good thing. The Breton's advantage in numbers would give her the upper hand in bargaining with Madanach.
Eltrys was one of the survivors. He had never been a fighter, but there was charus ichor dripping from his sword and splattered all over his armor. He was sometimes foolish, but he was loyal. She bent down and healed him. He wasn't even too badly injured, at least not physically. However, he had the haunted visage of one who had seen too much death. "We're all going to die down here aren't we? Well, except for you. Every time we're up against the wall you pull up something else."
"No," she told him firmly. "We've come this far Eltrys. Don't give up." In hindsight she should have left him behind in the mines. She had never trusted Madanach completely when he'd spoken of fifty men easily pushing through the Falmer. She had known it wouldn't be so easy, but she had still underestimated the dangers of Nchuand-Zel. So many died to get this far. If he were a Nord, she'd say something about Sovngarde, but he wasn't. "You have a pregnant wife who needs you, Eltrys. Don't give up. We're going to make it. In fact, we're almost free. Just a little bit further."
"You really think so?"
Daenerys put her hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eyes. "Yes, we're going to make it. The worst is past. We will soon be free."
.oOo.
As Odvan got everyone organized, she walked up and down the corridor healing the wounded and using Flames to destroy every chaurus egg. The Bretons piled their corpses into a funeral pyre. She had a brief prayer for the dead with only a few attending. The Forsworn butchered their dead for meat, Borkul included. Eola did it herself with tears in her eyes. Daenerys fired the remains after the butchering was done.
In the process of cleaning up, they also discovered recent human remains that had been partially devoured by the chaurus. The corpses were eaten down the bone, but still wore fur armor in the Forsworn style. Clearly, these were the remains of the Forsworn reinforcements that Madanch had been expecting. That meant they were on the path to the mountainside exit outside the city of Markarth. Much of the fur armor was destroyed, but they recovered a few good pieces. There was a bit of a debate over how to divide the spoils as the fur armor would make good padding to wear under the dwemer metal armor. Daenerys waded into the debate long enough to claim a set of fur armor for herself. Odvan immediately backed her up and Madanach also agreed. After that was decided, Daenerys didn't care. She let Odvan and Madanach argue it out and picked out the best pieces she could find to make a set of fur armor for herself. The fur armor she claimed didn't match, and it smelled of charus, but she felt dressed for the first time since she'd been thrown into the mines.
Exhaustion was written on every face, but no one complained when they pressed forward. There was no choice of direction, just a single tunnel that wandered around some but led generally upward. They encountered more chaurus egg sacks, which they burned, but they had apparently managed to kill all the adults.
After so long underground it seemed unnatural to see a glow up ahead, but when it sank in that they had finally made they all rushed forward. The bright sunlight was almost painful after so long in the darkness, but they all pushed toward only to come to a halt when they reached the exit. The tunnel opened on a ledge overlooking a forested hillside. Beyond the pine trees, the sun rose like a promise in the east. In the distance she could see the glint of water in the valley below. A trail of smoke to the north indicated there was a settlement of some sort not too far away.
"I think that's the most beautiful sight that I have ever seen," said Eltrys.
After days without sunlight, she had to agree.
